


Northbound Countdown

by Wearing Cardigans (Haelblazer)



Category: Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Brotherly Angst, Caught, Character/RPF Crossover, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Season/Series 04, Vessel Consent Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-02
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 06:06:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3239126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haelblazer/pseuds/Wearing%20Cardigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean meets Misha and, thinking he’s found Castiel’s vessel, worries about what’s happened--and why the vessel thinks Dean's name is "Jen." Dean and Sam play along with the case of mistaken identity, despite the tension between them regarding Ruby and that whole apocalypse thing that's going on. Originally written 2.Mar.2009-11.Mar.2009. Post 4x11 Sex-and-Violence, so not French Mistake or Jimmy-existence compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean meets Misha and, thinking he’s found Castiel’s vessel, worries about what’s happened.

“Jen?”

It was in a drugstore in a suburban town just north of Boston that Dean heard and recognized the angel’s voice—or at least the voice that he used when he didn’t want to perforate Dean’s eardrums. 

Dean had been contemplating two of the cotton ski caps in a nearby bin as they were on sale for five dollars, but the darkest they had was navy blue or forest green bordered with snowflakes and he didn’t look forward to walking around with Sam looking like a couple of five year olds going out to play in the snow.

He was turning one of the blue hats in his hand, trying to determine if it would be passable turned inside out; he held the hat in mid-air as he turned to see the angel at the end of the aisle and immediately got the impression that something wasn’t right.

It should have been the clothing that Dean noticed first—no trench coat, no tie, just a black wool over coat and what looked to be a sweater underneath.  He even had a hunter’s cap with earflaps and Dean credited the weather, credited being so used to people in hats and scarves, credited his own recent ghostly-assisted bout with frostbite with his failure to notice something so obvious on sight.

What Dean actually noticed first was the smile.

It’s not something he let himself think about a lot, and it’s definitely not something he’d as much as mentioned to Sam, but he felt like he and Castiel were getting to a decent place—like they had a bit of an understanding when it came to each other.  Yet even with that understanding, Cas had never looked as happy to see him as this person before him currently did.

As this person who could not be Cas walked his way, Dean finally noticed the clothing, the copy of Architectural Digest in his hand and the fact that he’d said the name “Jen,” which made Dean want to glance down the other end of the aisle to make sure this wasn’t just some guy who kind of looked like Castiel’s vessel on his way to speak with some woman standing behind him.  He was still a hunter though, and he wasn’t about to take his eyes off of someone who (or something that) was fastly approaching while looking like Cas on a morphine drip.

“I didn’t know you were going to be out this way.” Happy!Cas stopped about two feet away from Dean and grinned at him.  Dean felt his stomach flip at the sight of such unbridled joy directed his way and he was silently greatful that he wasn’t dealing with Castiel’s usual lack of respect for personal space.

“Shheyeah.” Dean chuckled awkwardly, trying to get a handle on the best way to approach the current situation.  “So, running into you…’s weird.” Dean could feel the strain on his face and knew that his expression was caught between a smile and being freaked out—he realized he probably looked insane and made a deliberate effort to smooth his face into the calm expression he used when he was pretending to be FBI.

“Why didn’t you mention you were gonna be out here?  You could’ve crashed at my place—I go through all the trouble of building a house and filling it up with furniture and now everyone I know is across the country and they never get to see it.” His eyes drifted midsentence and caught onto the snowflake covered cap in Dean’s hand.

“Kind of last minute…cold.” Dean waved the hat, feeling like a moron for being so off his game in front of what could either be an angel, a stranger, or some happy-go-lucky demon in a similar form.

“Cold.” The other man chuckled.  “You’ve been on the left coast too long…are you in town for a bit?”

“I think so.” Dean nodded—as far as he was concerned, he was in town until he figured out what was going on because the longer this conversation went on, the more obvious it was that this was not Cas.  The man seemed to recognize him though and he wasn't getting the vibe that it was some creature trying to fool him; the whole situation had a surreal quality and Dean was tempted to take a cue from Bobby and toss some holy water in this guy’s face.

“Cool, you should come by for dinner tonight—I mean, tell me if you have other things to do, I don’t want to be invading your time or anything.”

“No, I _definitely_ wanna have a nice talk with you sometime this week.” _Preferably once I’ve had a chance at some prep time._ To anyone else, Dean's words would have sound suggestive, but if Sam were there he'd recognize the sound of his brother gearing up for a hunt.

“Just give me a call before you stop by, I’ll give you the directions and everything.  I’m working on this poem and reading a few scripts later, but I’m basically open for the whole break.  You left Jared there with the dogs all week?”

“Oh, if we get into all the small talk now, what are we gonna discuss over dinner?”  Dean hated be on the unknowing end of a conversation.  For all he knew, this guy was toying with him and there was no Jared and there were no dogs and Jen got possessed by some demon years ago and this guy blamed Dean. 

“Heh.  Funny.” The other man quirked his eyebrows and Dean was ashamed that, with all the theories he was coming up with, it took him so long to wonder if this was just Castiel’s vessel, walking around with some kind of blended memories putting Dean's face in there with things from the guy's normal life.  He suddenly regretted not asking more about how the vessel situation worked, at taking the angel’s word that it wasn’t like possession, and not bothering to ask what happened to the body when Castiel was gone—if he ever even left it.

“You haven’t been having any blackouts, have you?” Dean hadn’t even meant to ask the question and he was glad Sam wasn’t there to see him handling this so poorly.

“I’m sorry?” The other man stuttered over a confused chuckle, but his pocket began to jingle and saved Dean from spontaneously spitting any of the other questions that would have normally been cut off by Sam’s frowny face letting him know he was going too far.  Dean made sure not to squirm under the other man's steady gaze as he answered the call.

“Hey…no, I might be busy depending on…no, I just ran into Jen actually…yeah…yeah…ye—can I call you back in a few minutes?”  After he hung up and while he was apologizing, Dean’s brain had a chance to kick back into gear.

“You know what, I have this new phone actually.  Can I get your number again?”

“Oh, yeah man.” Happy!Cas grabbed the phone and began punching the numbers in as he spoke.  “Hold on, I’ll do one of your poses.” He turned the camera around and tilted his head in a manner that reminded Dean of Castiel, but the man’s lips were pouting in a way the angel never had as he snapped a picture of himself.

Oddly enough, Dean could see himself posing just like that and it just made him more confused about how much this guy knew about him.  He kept his composure through friendly goodbyes until they parted ways outside of the store, but as soon as the man was out of sight, he frantically scrolled through his phone book until he saw that just above Missouri Moseley's name, there was a new entry: Misha.


	2. One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After meeting Misha, Dean tells Sam he thinks he ran into Castiel’s vessel. 

The sound of a motel door swinging open cued Sam’s head to whip around in time to see Dean storm inside and come to a sudden stop with his mouth hanging open.  Sam watched his older brother stand there staring at him with his eyes wide open for what felt like two full minutes before he gave in at the exact same time that Dean began to speak.

 “You alright?”

“I think I just ran into Cas’s vessel.”

They processed each other’s words and, assuming that his statement answered Sam’s question, Dean let his brother speak.

“What, _just_ his vessel?”

“Minus one big honkin angel.” Dean flicked his hands in the air and started to pace between the two beds.

“That’s…not good.”

“Uh, ya think?”

“And this guy seemed human?”

“A lot of things seem human, but yeah—" Dean’s sentence turned into a mumble.  “—more human than Cas ever did.”

“I guess it makes sense.  When demons possess people, there’s still someone left if they don’t burn ‘em out.”

“Yeah, but Cas told me that angels don’t possess—then again, I guess the details of it don’t matter so much if where just talking about him leaving a body behind when he goes wherever he goes.”

“You think this guy just runs around living his life around Boston until the angels have a message for us?”

“I don’t know.  Haven’t really had the chance to ask Cas about it with all the seals breaking.” Half-way through his sentence, Dean was hit full-force with the idea that he had only briefly entertained—that Castiel’s absence from his vessel could mean that he was not coming back.  “If this guy really was his vessel—he was completely out of it.  He recognized me, right, but he had to be mixing things up or something because he kept calling me ‘Jen’.”

“He thought you were a girl?” Sam sounded incredulous and while there wasn’t a hint of amusement in his voice, Dean glowered at him as if the younger man had laughed in his face and Sam cleared his throat before continuing.   “So, what do you think?  Maybe this guy’s thoughts got all mixed up with the angelic thoughts somehow and he’s matching your face with someone else’s name?”

“’s my best guess.” Dean shrugged.

“What’d you say to him?”

“Played along, said I got a new phone and got his number.” Dean started taking off his jacket, the heated motel air finally making its way through the layers.  “He invited me to dinner, so we need to do some prep work or something before I go up there—pack up some holy water—”

“Wait, he invited you to dinner?  Like a date?”  Sam interrupted.

“What?  No!” Dean paused with his arms still caught in his jacket, just long enough to look at Sam like he was an idiot.  “Apparently I’ve never been to his house and he wants to show me around.”

“Around his bedroom.” Sam laughed, but Dean only frowned in response.  “Oh come on, you’re not gonna get out of me ragging on you after all the crap you’ve given me about women.”

“Women, Sam, women!  Not guys running around looking like Cas’ vessel.”

“And it’s the ‘Cas’ vessel’ part that bothers you?”

Dean glared across the room.

“Okay, changing the subject.” Sam turned his attention to the open laptop in front of him.  “We need to come up with a story for who I am in case he hasn’t already assigned me to some persona.”

“Whoa, there, cowboy.  _I_ was invited, not me plus one.”

“It sounds like _‘Jen’_ was invited, and if it’s really not a date then there shouldn’t be a problem with me coming along.”

“Fine, then we’ll call it a date.” Dean peeled off another shirt.  “I don’t need you around blocking my man-boning.”

Sam’s sigh was a little overdramatic as far as Dean was concerned.  “I’m not letting you out on a hunt alone—because this is basically a hunt until we know for sure that this is just a regular guy.  Seriously, do you really think I’m gonna sit here while you walk off trying to pretend to be someone else when we don’t know anything about who you’re supposed to be?”

“Exactly, we don’t even know anything about who I’m supposed to be.  How are we even going to make up a good story for who you are?  And if you’re supposed to be someone already, then both of us are just going to be sitting there lost.”

“Dean, we lie about who we are on a daily basis, and when you screw up, I’m there to cover for you.  I’m not letting you go there alone so we should stop wasting time and start figuring out who I’m gonna be.”

“Damn it, Sam.” Dean flopped down on the bed, then pointed to Sam without looking at him.  “You’re getting a girl name too.”


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Dean meets Misha and thinks he may be Castiel’s vessel, Sam and Dean talk outside of Misha’s house. 

The boys were almost half an hour late arriving at Misha’s house.  Or, more accurately, they were almost half an hour late arriving at his front door because after they’d scouted out the area with the EMF, Dean had insisted that they try to inconspicuously circle the property with salt.

“Isn’t this a little extreme?” Sam held the container of salt in front of his face, tipping it over in the process and letting a slim stream of salt fall to the ground.

Dean frowned at his brother and tapped the side of the container, knocking it into an upright position. “It’ll be nice to focus on keeping our back-stories straight and figuring out if we’ve got a missing angel on our hands without worrying about demons flying in.”

 “I get that, and I get bringing this stuff in with us, but you want to circle this whole place?  That’s like running around drawing devil’s traps in every diner we go to or every house where we talk to some grieving widow.”

“What’s it gonna take?  Ten minutes?  You spent longer than that making yourself all fresh and pretty to tag along.”

“I took a shower, Dean.  I’m not going to show up at someone’s house for dinner after not washing for three days.”

Dean pouted and smelled himself.

Sam rolled his eyes.  “Look, I’m just wondering what you’re expecting to accomplish. If that guy in there really is a vessel for an angel of the Lord, I’m guessing he’s got better protections on him than our salt circle.”

“Oh, because those guys really look after their own.” Dean felt the handprint on his arm tingle the way it did whenever he voiced his lack of faith.  It was beginning to become a constant feeling, especially since the ordeal with Anna.  The last time he’d even seen Castiel—almost being taken out at the hands of that uber demon, being saved by Dean, holding Uriel back, eyes trying to tell Dean something that he couldn’t figure out, even now.  

“Dean, this might not even be Castiel’s vessel.”

“Can you not give me a hard time about this?!” Dean’s eyebrows were raised as if to plead with Sam to just leave it alone.  He tried to adopt a more ordered tone, but it wasn’t completely successful. “ It’s salt, we put it down, we go inside—it doesn’t have to be a whole thing.”

“I don’t get why it’s a thing for me to want some information.  Did something happen that I don’t know about?  Did something seem off in your conversation?”

“No, I told you—I told you what happened.  I stopped keeping secrets a long time ago.” Dean held his arms out in silent challenge.

“You can bait me all you want, but I’m here and I’m pretty glad actually because something’s off about you right now.  Salting down an entire yard?  It’s a little bit over the top, Dean.”

“Fine.  I’m gonna go ahead and take this ‘over the top’ precaution.” Dean turned and began walking in the opposite direction, sprinkling salt as he went.

“Dean.”

“No, man, it’s cool.” Dean turned to face Sam, but continued walking backwards as he spoke. “You’ve got your way of protecting us, right?  More efficient, you’re better at it—“

“I told you I was sorry.” Sam started walking towards Dean, careful to avoid smudging the salt line.

“Yeah…” Dean stopped.  “Look, didn’t even want to talk about it, just….that’s either Cas’ vessel in there or something looking a hell of a lot like him.  And I really don’t feel like explaining my reasoning to you, I really don’t.  But, I’m not half-assing this.”

Sam sighed, but turned back to the start of Dean’s salt line and began sprinkling in the other direction, knowing that if something went wrong because it wasn’t there, that Dean wouldn’t let up about it for weeks and they had enough problems as it was without him giving Dean something else to be right or righteous about.


	4. Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean, pretending to be Jensen, brings Sam along to his dinner with Misha in an effort to determine if the actor is Castiel’s vessel. 

Earlier that day, Dean had called Misha for directions and mentioned that he wanted to bring a surprise guest to dinner.

_“Let me guess…it’s gotta be Jared or Chris.” Misha sounded excited at the prospect of extra company, which made Dean a bit more confident that the other man didn’t think that this was going to be a date.  After speaking with Sam, Dean had started to get paranoid about his conversation with Misha in the drugstore.  He’d been so distracted with thoughts of Castiel and justifications for the presence of the man standing in front of him that Sam’s ribbing had him wondering if he’d missed out on some obvious cues._

_“You’ll just have to see.” Dean forced out a chuckle, trying to sound distractingly charming without coming across as flirtatious just to play it safe._

After getting Misha’s address, Sam was able to do enough searching to find his full name and from there he discovered that he worked with someone named Jensen.  About an hour of research turned up a cast list for the show that Misha and Jen worked on with someone named Jared, and there was one mention of someone named Christian, but no pictures of anyone that Sam and Dean could identify as the Jared or Chris that Misha had mentioned.

~

“You know, your surprises really aren’t all that surprising.” Misha greeted Dean when he and Sam arrived at his house that evening.  “I knew it was going to be Jared or Chris.”

“What can I say, I’m an open book.” Dean spread his arms and was taken by surprise when Misha moved in for a hug.  His gaze darted over to see Sam smirking at him and Dean squinted in return.

Sam held his hand out for a handshake, but Misha just grabbed on and pulled the taller man into a hug.

“Um, hey.” Sam shifted awkwardly until Misha pulled back and offered to give the brothers a tour of his home.   As Misha led them further into the house, Sam signaled to Dean to hang back a few steps.

“So, am I Jared or am I Chris?” Sam whispered at the top of Dean’s head.

“I don’t know.  Maybe you can hang back here staring at that chair or something and I’ll ask him to call you in.”

“Okay.  And I think I know enough about those guys to pass for whoever he thinks I am—at least until we figure out what’s going on.”

“Yeah, I’m just mad we don’t get to use your back-story.”

“That back-story was stupid, Dean.  I don’t even know why I agreed to it.”

“Lindsey the traveling magician would’ve been awesome.”

“What was I supposed to do if he wanted to see a trick?  Move his chair with my mind?”

Before Dean could figure out how he felt about that off-hand reference to Sammy’s freaky demon blood powers, Misha called out from the next room, “Is Jared having trouble fitting under the doors?  I didn’t really build the place to his proportions.

~

Two hours into their evening with Misha, Sam and Dean were getting comfortable in their roles as Jared and Jensen.  Misha hadn’t reacted to the holy water that Dean slipped into his drink and the Latin exorcism that Sam attempted to casually place into conversation as an example of a poem he’d once heard.

While Misha was engaging Sam in a story about interning at the White House, a story that he “could’ve sworn” he’d told Jared already, it hit Dean that he’d almost forgotten that he was supposed to be treating this as a hunt.

It had been easy, settling into an evening of food and conversation—something that was becoming a rare occurrence with the breaking seals and approaching apocalypse on top of their usual hunts.  Misha had kind of come in like a whirlwind of unexpected joy, with Dean dropping into the role of Jensen Ackles, a guy who belonged in Misha’s world, a guy who was supposed to be used to just sitting around and enjoying himself.

Watching Sam looking so intrigued at the idea of the type of job that he could never go for now reminded Dean that they were playing roles.  It was odd pulling out of the moment, like when he regained some consciousness of the real world while the djinn had him living out a lie.  Watching Misha, he almost felt like he was in some alternate reality where Cas was just a regular guy who cooked him dinner and engaged his brother in conversation and showed up in his life not just to bring bad news or deliver orders, but to spend some time.

If Dean focused on blocking out the conversation, he could almost pretend that Cas was in front of him now, that he’d tracked Dean down in Massachusetts and that he hadn’t been absent since the mess of violence and drama that came down around Anna.

Dean kept flashing back to that last look that Cas gave him.  Did it mean he wasn’t coming back?  Aside from the handprint on his arm, was the man chatting happily in front of him the only physical remainder of the angel’s presence in Dean’s life?

He hated not knowing if he’d ever see Cas again, and as he watched Sam pretending to be someone who may or may not even really look like him, he hated knowing that there was no real way to even keep this vessel—if that’s who he was—in their lives.

Dean wanted to though.  The more he looked at Misha, the more he wanted to be able to see him from time to time.  And it wasn’t just that he wanted to be around if this was the vessel and Cas came back, it was also that he associated that face with everything Cas had represented for him.

Years of seeing the worst that the world had to offer, even more years in hell as the tortured and the torturer, and then Cas gave him the second glimpse at what it meant to believe—something he hadn’t felt since seeing a would-be rapist impaled with a piece of scaffolding.

And now it looked like Cas was gone.  But he’d found Misha, who maybe needed his help and invited him into his home, and didn’t think his brother was out to end the world.  It almost made him want to believe in something; how could he give that up?


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean, pretending to be Jensen, gets some alone time with Misha, who he believes is Castiel’s vessel. 

The expression on Sam’s face when he looked down at his ringing cell phone gave Dean a pretty good idea of who was calling.  They didn’t discuss Ruby—Dean didn’t really trust her, but Sam obviously did and she’d came through for them enough that Dean would leave the whole situation alone until she gave him a reason not to.  Still, Sam was always watching Dean for a reaction, and whatever he saw obviously told Sam that he needed to hide his meetings with Ruby from his brother.

Dean tried to keep his attention focused on Misha when Sam excused himself to take the call, but he could feel Sam throwing the puppy dog eyes at his head and he couldn’t stop himself from lowering his eyes to his glass, something that he’d been using for years as a shorthand for 'just go'.

If Sam had told Ruby where they were going, then she was probably waiting for him just outside of the salt lines.  The way things were going lately, Dean assumed that was the case.

“You’ve been quiet tonight.” Misha stood up and walked over from the chair where he’d been sitting and settled down beside Dean in the space that Sam had just vacated.

“Just enjoying the company, I guess.” Dean placed an arm on the back of the couch and twisted to get a better view of the man he’d been staring at all night.

“Is everything alright?” Misha squinted and it reminded Dean of the look that Castiel gave him when he realized Dean didn’t think he deserved to be saved—there was concern in that expression.  “You and Jared are okay?”

“Yeah, we’re great.” It had become natural to pretend things were fine between him and Sam, but even pretending to be other people that part of their act was never convincing.

“Hmm.  You seemed to be in another world all night.”

“What?  Man, tonight was awesome—why would I want to go drifting off to someplace else?”

“I don’t know, you were just staring off into space—or at me, I couldn’t really tell,” Misha chuckled nervously, “You, uh, don’t normally keep your eyes so locked in my direction for so long.”

The muscles in Dean’s neck tensed—how could he get caught watching someone?  He spent years training to be sly and subtle, yet someone he just met could pick up on what he was doing so easily.

The silence extended to an uncomfortable length as Dean had to fight through the excuses that he would normally give for staring and get to one that would make sense as far as what he knew of Jensen.  He barely knew enough about the man to get through dinner, so he decided to play around with the truth.

“’s just I realized…that you look like someone I used to know.”

“You never mentioned that before.” Misha twisted towards Dean, leaning in a bit.

“Yeah.” Dean felt uncomfortable under Misha’s sudden interest and he turned his attention toward his own arm on the back of the couch.  “Like I said, just realized it myself.”

“He was someone you knew well?”

Dean knew that this was a prime opportunity to try to trigger some recognition, maybe remind Misha that he’d been acting as an angel’s vessel for the last few months.  He was torn though because he didn’t want to hit too close on the truth of what he was thinking—and he had to say “thinking”, “feeling” was just too Dr. Phil, just too much meaning.

Misha’s curious face, lips parted and eyebrows lowered, like Cas when he tried to understand—and that was the problem right there.  Dean looked at that face and it was a constant reminder that he both wanted and didn’t want.  He looked at that face and saw the one being whom he wanted to confide in—or maybe not “confide”, maybe have a vague allegory and hypothetical-filled conversation where he could work out his problem without being a girl about it.

How could he have this conversation with Sam?  How could he come back after 40 years, or 4 months, or any amount of time and not feel the same connection with the brother he went to hell for, how could they lie to each other to the point where the kid he helped raise was unrecognizable, and how could he add to that strain by telling that baby brother that all Dean could think about was one of the angels who’d basically threatened to take him out?

And then there was the part of him that knew that his Sammy was still in there and would probably try to overanalyze everything that Dean told him and decide that Dean had some kind of unhealthy attachment to the angel that represents his salvation or some crap like that.

But Misha didn’t have that context, he’d only know what Dean told him and maybe it would help.

“I don’t know if I knew him.  But, the longer I don’t see him, the more I realize that he _got_ me, you know?  It’d be nice to have that…again.” Dean tried to keep his words as general as possible.

“Well you and Jared seem to have that connection thing going on—live together, work together, don’t want to tear each others’ eyes out.”

“Heh,” Dean wondered again whether Misha was mixing up facts about Jensen and Jared with facts he’d learned about Sam and Dean while acting as a vessel for Cas.  “It was just different.  He, um, he was only really around for the big things so I never really got to have this kind of everyday thing with him—and I don’t know if that makes my whole idea of him kind of screwed or if I just—” Dean stopped himself mid-sentence and blew out a puff of air, unsure what he was about to say, but knowing that he was probably better off stopping whatever was about to come out.

“He’s…did you say he was ‘gone’?”

“Maybe.  I’m kind of waiting to see.” Dean glanced back at Misha, not meaning to hold his gaze, but not wanting to turn away when he saw that wide-eyed sympathy in the other man’s eyes.  “Have you really been okay lately?  Not losing time?  Seeing things you can’t really explain?”

“You asked me about having blackouts before, right?  Is that happening to you?  Does it have something to do with this…friend of yours that I look like?”

Dean breathed heavily.  “There’s no way for me to do this is there?”

“No way for you to do what?”

Dean shook his head and Misha slid himself a few inches closer on the couch in order to place a hand on Dean’s shoulder.

“Is there something you’re trying to tell me—or ask me?” Misha had lowered his voice and sense memory kicked in, sending Dean images of Castiel, angel of the Lord, sitting in a park and confiding secrets that he had almost definitely never told another angel or another man.

“I want…” Dean’s voice cracked and he paused to gather his thoughts before continuing, determined to maintain eye contact.  “I want to know something, but there’s really no way for me to…there’s no way for me to make this work the way I’m doing it now.”

“Maybe I think you’re doing just fine.” Misha licked his lips and Dean noticed they weren’t nearly as chapped as the ones on Cas’ vessel.  Was this guy even Cas’ vessel at all?

“Am I?” Dean laughed sarcastically until he noticed Misha’s hand sliding along his shoulder in a comforting motion.  “I’m not…I’m not hitting on you, you know?”

“I know.” Misha leaned in.


	6. Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Misha make out. This...is a really short chapter. I apologize for 2009-me.

When Misha’s lips landed on Dean’s, his eyes closed instinctively before opening wide with the realization of what was happening.  Dean moved his head back, breaking the kiss only moments after it had started, but Misha’s hand was still on the back of his neck, holding him inches away.

“I’m really not—wasn’t” Dean’s words were muffled as Misha leaned in again, mouth open and soft, tongue licking the hunter’s bottom lip and it felt enough like any kiss Dean had ever had that he fell into his comfort zone–-pushing in closer, scraping teeth on lips and gripping the neck of the person in front of him until he knew that they were feeling something, that he was feeling something.

Dean felt a hand hooking into his belt and he mimicked the motion, grabbing at the back of Misha’s waistband and slipping his thumb inside to scratch his nail along the actor’s lower back.

“What am I doing?” Dean breathed his words into Misha’s mouth, pushing and pulling back from the other man’s lips, wanting to stop himself, but wanting that connection, but unable to ignore that he was making out with some guy, but feeling so compelled to touch and connect and release.

“I think you’re doing me.” Misha’s lowered, raspy voice sounded like Cas again and it stirred such longing for the angel that Dean dove forward, swinging his left leg over Misha’s waist and barely giving the other man enough time to pull his legs up to lay flat on the couch.

“Fuck, I think I want this,” Dean panted into the other man’s mouth as he grasped handfuls of his t-shirt, scrabbling to push it up and rubbing his stomach along the way.

“Yeah?” Misha gasped back as Dean moved to bite gently along his jawline.

“Yeah.”


	7. Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Sam are at Misha’s house trying to determine if the actor is Castiel’s vessel. Or, in Dean's case, maybe just fool around with the guy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: discussions of dubious content in this chapter.

Misha’s couch was not large enough to accommodate two grown men writhing atop one another and Dean had to rest one leg on the floor and one on top of Misha’s own closely pressed legs, making their scramble to open each other’s pants clumsy and tight.

Dean pushed Misha’s hands away and lifted himself slightly, hooking into the top of Misha’s open jeans and pulling them down as the actor attempted to assist him by squirming from side to side.Once the pants were below his thighs, Dean sat back down and gripped the other man’s growing erection through the opening in his boxer briefs.

The angle made Dean’s motion’s awkward, but he tried to move his wrist in the hard, steady motion that he liked himself as blue eyes watched him with unwavering attention.It was odd, looking at that face beneath him, squinting with lust instead of curiosity, mouth open and breath coming out in stunted, rhythm-less gasps when he couldn’t remember if Cas had ever breathed at all.

Misha reached up to grip Dean’s arm and his palm covered the handprint imprinted on the hunter’s skin.Dean groaned, dropping his weight onto the man below him and subconsciously squeezing harder, eliciting a grunt as his hand broke into an unsteady spazzing motion.

The sound of a throat clearing took a few seconds to register in Dean’s brain before he remembered that he and Misha were in the middle of an open room and that Sam had just stepped outside to take a phonecall.

“Jared!We seem to have uh-huh forgotten you were here.” Misha choked out and Dean pulled back and turned to see Sam looking at them on the couch as if he were trying to work out a way that their position could mean anything other than what it obviously did.

Sam’s eyes lowered to where the two men were still touching and Dean hurried to zip his pants, keeping his own eyes directed towards the floor, which didn’t help the situation as it gave him a nice view of how much his jeans were still poking out around the zipper region.

“Can I talk to you in the kitchen?” Sam kept his eyes trained on Dean.“Now.”

Dean nodded and patted Misha’s thigh reassuringly, moving to step away from where he had been straddling their host, but being pulled back down.

“Is everything okay?With you two?” Misha pointed between Sam and Dean and the older Winchester brother clasped his waiving finger and brought it to settle between them.

“He probably just wants to make sure I’m not taking advantage of your hospitality.” Dean smirked unconvincingly.

“Alright.” Misha nodded and let go, trying to catch Sam’s attention, but frowning when the other man deliberately avoided his gaze.

Dean followed his brother into the kitchen, licking his lips nervously and still tasting traces of the lemonade that Misha had been drinking that evening.Sam gripped the edge of the counter and Dean wondered in passing if his little brother was grinding notches into the wood as they stood there.

“What happened, Dean, you run out of random women to have one night stands with when we’re supposed to be on a hunt?”

“It’s not what it looked like.” Dean hated the words as soon as they left his mouth, knowing how stupid they sounded.

“Aw, the brother I know could come up with a way better excuse than that.”

“It’s not an excuse, Sam, you know me!I don’t do....things like this.” Dean pointed over his shoulder in the general direction of Misha’s living room.

“What don’t you do, men?Because you do stuff exactly like this all the time if we’re not talking about gender.”

“I really don’t want to have this conversation with you right now.”

“Okay, ignore what I said when we walked in here.You should know that I absolutely don’t care if you sleep with guys, Dean.You’re my brother.What I care about is the ‘why’ behind this whole thing, _especially_ when you’re saying you don’t normally do it.I mean, if you’ve been hiding this…part of you—”

“I don’t have some secret life.I don’t sleep with men and if I did I for damn sure wouldn’t need to hide it.” Dean pounded his fist on the counter and Sam let go and backed away from it, brow furrowed as he listened.“I'm a hunter; I'm not scared of what you or anyone else thinks of what I do.”

“Fine, you’re not in anyone’s closet.Then why are you suddenly doing this?Because if this has something to do with that angel—”

“His name is Cas!Show him some respect and stop acting like you don’t know it.”

“Fine, I know his name.It’s Castiel, sounds like Uriel, and Gabriel, and all those other names that angels have.Angels of the Lord, beings that we’re not supposed to play out little sexual fantasies about with people who remind of us them for whatever reason.”

Dean started shouting by the time Sam reached the word “fantasies”.“You’ve got some damn nerve; screwing around with a demon inside a dead girl’s body and talking about me and what I’m doing.”

“That’s different and you know it.”

“How is it different, Sam?Is it somehow better?” Dean poked his brother in the chest.

“You’re fooling around with this guy under some really false pretenses.” Sam interrupted.“He thinks you’re someone else.”

“Didn’t that medical examiner think you were an agent with the FBI?Was that maybe a little bit wrong?”

“This man in there thinks you’re someone he works with.What happens when we leave and the real guy doesn’t have any memory of all this?If it’s just a conversation, fine, but having sex with him when he thinks you’re someone he knows?It’s a violation, Dean, at the very least it’s a sexual assault.”

“You know what?You need shut your damn mouth about that because you have no idea what we were doing.” Dean turned away.

“Huh,” Sam shook his head and his laughter didn’t reach his eyes, “I actually got a really good look at what you two were doing. “

“Sam, it’s not…” Dean started, but didn’t know how to finish the sentence. “We were just talking, okay, and I was trying to find a way to figure out if he’s really Cas’ vessel because this whole night has turned up nothing so far.”

“Actually it did.That was Ruby just now.The angels saved a seal in Philadelphia about an hour ago.Whoever Misha is, he’s not the vessel.”


	8. Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After fooling around with Misha, and an argument with Sam, Dean goes to have a talk with Misha, who thinks Dean is Jensen.  (Sigh. That summary.)

Dean stormed out of the kitchen, ordering Sam to wait there, but only receiving an assurance that if he didn’t let Misha in on at least a significant part of the truth, Sam would do it for him.

Misha was perched on the edge of the couch, elbows resting on his knees, like he’d just rolled up from where he’d been lying earlier.His hair was all shoved forward, looking as if a breeze were blowing from somewhere behind him, but otherwise he’d organized himself well enough that there was no evidence of their earlier activies.

Dean could see the other man’s mouth clenched between the fingers of the hand where he was resting his chin and he almost hoped that he’d just heard the whole fight so he wouldn’t have to explain what a lying dick he was to a pretty nice guy.

“D’you hear any of that?” Dean’s voice was gravely, serious, and sent a message that he was prepared for another argument, but he knew he was wrong.

Misha straightened up, resting his arms across his chest. “Heard some banging, shouting about someone named—Cas, I think?I tried not to listen, couldn’t really avoid it at some points though.What was that all about?”

“He—yeah, he thinks—he was saying what needed to be said.” Dean walked over to the couch and squatted in front of Misha, clasping the back of the other man’s neck with one hand and rubbing a thumb just below Misha’s lips with the other.

“What did he say?” Misha’s gaze darted from Dean’s eyes to his lips and back.

Dean just shook his head and moved in to kiss him, but Misha pulled back.“Are you cheating on someone with me right now?”

Dean shook his head again, but when Misha didn’t seem to react, he answered, “No.I’m not.”

“Then who’s Cas?”

“It’s just that…guy that you remind me of.That’s Cas.”

“And Jared thinks you’re using me to pretend you’re with him?” Misha licked his upper lip as if considering the possibility.“I don’t—I don’t think I mind…I guess.If he’s gone and you need…I mean, you know it’s me, and we’ve gotten along pretty well on our own terms even before tonight.”

Dean bit his lip, eyes lowering as he absentmindedly stroked Misha’s jaw with his thumb, “You are _so_ fucking awesome…and I’m lying to you.”

Dean’s eyes raised to gauge Misha’s reaction and he saw that the actor’s mouth was open in a silent question, head tilted in that way that made Dean’s stomach clench.

The hunter rested his forehead on Misha’s and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath.“I came here because I thought you might be connected to Cas, I came here to help you or to help him, because I _help_ people, you know?I try to make up for everything that I did—”

“Jen, what—?” Misha tried to interrupt, but Dean continued.

“My name,” Dean raised his voice to put a stop to Misha’s interruption, “is Dean Winchester, that’s my brother Sam in your kitchen.I wanted to figure out why you thought I was your friend, but I’m not him, I’m not Jensen.”


	9. Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Misha reacts to Dean’s confession that he’s not Jensen. 

Dean could feel the deep rise and fall of Misha’s chest and when the actor didn’t respond to his confession, Dean pulled his head back slightly and opened his eyes.

“That’s,” Misha started, but broke into an unconvincing laugh half-way, “Jen, that’s not funny.”

“I’m sorry.I’m not him.” Dean shook his head softly.

“Stop.” Misha whispered.

“I should’ve told you before we did all this—

“Please.”

“I didn’t think any of that was gonna happen, it was—you were just so beautif—”

“Just stop, okay!” Misha shouted over Dean’s rambling.“Stop saying all this.What am I supposed to do?How am I even supposed to understand that?What, you and your brother just look like people I’ve known for months now?”

“If we really look like them…there’s a lot of things that could be wrong here, but I promise you that we did not set out to hurt you.”

Misha pushed away from Dean, making a noise that the hunter heard as disbelief, and reached into his pocket to pull out a cell phone.

“Are you calling the police?” Dean hooked his thumbs into the front pocket of his jeans, figuring that he and Sam could be long gone and tracking down their look-alikes before the first responders arrived.

Misha bit down on his lip and watched Dean out of the corner of his eye while dialing, only turning to look at the other man after lifting the phone to his ear, apparently waiting for an answer.A series of rapid-fire blinks signaled to Dean that someone picked up on the other line.

“Jen?” Misha gulped after speaking, and if that one word carried any emotion, Dean would have identified it as _hurt_.“Hey…you and Jared, you’re _in_ Vancouver?...nothing weird’s happened?...no…no, just…look, I need you to be completely honest, completely serious with me right now because I’m about to—I don’t know what I’m about to do actually…yeah, I, uh—do you know about these guys who look like you and Jared, they’re calling themselves Dean and….”

“Sam.” Sam spoke up and Dean and Misha both looked at him standing in the entry to the kitchen, neither of them sure when he’d arrived.

“Dean and Sam.Winchester…I just had a two hour dinner with them thinking they were you, so yeah…no, don’t, don’t—not yet…yeah, if you don’t hear from me by then.” Misha hung up and Dean spoke as soon as he shut the phone.

“Sam, can you give us a second?” Dean asked over his shoulder.

“We need to get out of here.”Sam started toward Dean. “We can figure out what’s going on and deal with it on the road.”

Dean kept watching Misha, who was looking between Sam and Dean nervously, and he pulled his keys from the pocket of his jeans, dangling them before tossing them in the general direction that Sam’s voice was coming from.He didn’t hear the keys hit the floor, so he assumed his brother had caught them.

“You know how to treat my baby.” Dean tried for a lighthearted tone, but finally turned to his brother when he didn’t hear footsteps.“You wanted me to have a talk—I’m having it.”

Sam sighed and walked towards the front door, taking one last look at Misha before leaving, “We don’t know what he is, either.”

“We don’t know what he _is_?” Misha asked incredulously from his position backed against a wall.

“My brother’s been…overly cautious lately.Or maybe I have some kind of death wish.”

“Being around me is…a death wish?Didn’t you two just run some kind of con for me for the last few hours?”

“It wasn’t a con,” Dean stepped towards Misha, but stopped when he saw the other man tense up.“When you came up to me in that store, I thought…maybe that something was wrong with Cas.You knew me, but you thought I was someone else. “

“So you asked me if I was having blackouts or memory problems.”

“It’s not even that I really thought you were a different person, I mean how would you recognize me?” Dean rubbed the scar on his arm. “What was I supposed to think?”

“What am _I_ supposed to think?You thought something was mentally wrong with me so you—what?What were you gonna do if Jared—Sam, whoever the hell he is, hadn’t walked in on us.Were gonna fuck me on the couch and let me think I was sleeping with someone I knew for more than four hours?”

“I wish I could answer ‘no’ to that,” Dean forced himself to maintain eye contact, “because the real answer makes me sound like someone I don’t want to be.”

“I really don’t know what you expect me to say here.”Seeing that Dean apparently wasn’t going to follow through on any desires or act out violently, Misha relaxed enough to lower himself to sit on the arm of the couch.

“I sure as hell don’t know.Not really big on talks.Like I said, this was Sammy’s idea.But he was right, you deserved to know the truth.So, I guess I’m just asking that if you see me or Sam again that you hear us out.Then again maybe you should be careful about all four of us, just to be safe.”

“You want me to be careful about Jensen and Jared?”

“I want you to be careful about everyone.” Dean inched towards the couch and Misha eyed him warily, but didn’t move.When Dean reached him, he didn’t attempt to make contact, but leaned down with his hands on his thighs in an un-intimidating manner to look the actor in the eyes.“Misha, you look _a lot_ like someone who _a lot_ of people might have an interest in.I’m gonna trust you enough to tell you that, I’m gonna trust that this whole thing hasn’t been some kind of mind-fuck on me and my brother.Now, that probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to you, but it’s all I really have right now.”

“’s not quite enough at this point.” Misha leaned back, putting some distance between them.

“Yeah.It’d probably be really out of line to try to kiss you goodbye, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know.I might be emotionally distraught enough to actually let it happen.” Misha blinked and Dean finally noticed that the edges of his eyes were tinged with red.

“Alright, this is where I prove I’m not a total dick," Dean rested a hand on Misha’s shoulder. "Gonna...walk away now.”


	10. Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>  Sam and Dean get out of town.

Dean slipped into the passenger seat and after a standard cursory check to make sure it was actually Sam on the driver’s side (because he was a hunter first and foremost), Dean looked straight ahead, pretending he hadn’t noticed the look of open expectation on Sam’s face.

Dean focused on putting his seatbelt on, making an extra effort to keep his eyes from looking at his brother.

“We’re gonna talk about this.” Sam stated firmly, but he seemed to accept the silence as they drove south east out of Massachusetts.

Dean played with his cell phone, eyeing Misha’s phone number in his phonebook, eventually deciding not to delete the contact after scrolling up and down over it for fourteen minutes.

He wondered if Misha had called the police after they left, if he’d called his friends back and told them more about what happened.  He knew that he and Sam would have to make that their next mission—two guys running around looking like them?  Especially after they’d been reported dead back when Lilith destroyed that police station.  The whole thing reeked of shape shifters, but when they’d looked Jensen and Jared up, the identities went back more than the few months that Misha had known them, so Dean didn’t know what to think.

“You think we’d flag at any checkpoints trying to cross the border to go to Vancouver?” Dean finally turned to look at Sam and saw that his brother’s knuckles were white from clenching the steering wheel, while his face just looked tired—mostly in the eyes where Sam looked like he wanted to go to sleep.  “Whoa, you look like hell.”

Sam frowned and looked over at Dean for less than a second before returning his eyes to the road.

“Poor choice of words, right?” Dean slumped down into his seat, assuming that Sam was trying to figure out their situation and get his head around everything he just saw, and whatever Ruby told him; Dean was kind of disappointed because it meant that Sam wasn’t going to let him pretend nothing happened.  Sure enough, when Sam spoke, he went right for the heart of the matter.

“Why don’t you look like hell, Dean?  Why do you look like everything’s fine?”

Dean shifted in his seat, hating how distant Sam’s voice sounded because it meant he probably had a whole line of questioning prepared.

“Takes a lot of stress to mess with something this pretty.” Dean tried to joke, but even he knew it rang hollow.

“I’m serious, man, are you just being you and acting like none of that just happened?  Do you just not care?  Maybe you think it was fine trying to screw an angel’s vessel under false pretenses.  I can’t tell anymore.  You take months to tell me what’s going on with you.  Ever since you came back—”

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t want to _whine_ about torturing people in hell or anything.” Dean snapped, everything Sam said under the siren’s spell still sitting like a sub-layer of skin just under the surface since they’d lied to each other and pretended that they were okay.

“Why would you whine about it, you _liked_ it, right?” Sam snapped in return. “Probably all set to go back.  Screw the apocalypse!  Dean Winchester wants to get himself thrown back into hell!”

“You think…with everything I can’t even put into words…that the pit was some kind of boot camp that I can’t wait to revisit?” Dean hissed before suddenly shouting; the sound of his raised voice was overpowering in the small confines of the Impala.  “Demons don’t even want hell, Sam!  Did your girlfriend explain that to you when you were all over some dead girl’s body?”

“Actually, she did, not _during_ of course.” Sam responded bitterly to his brother’s jab about Ruby, but he took a breath and softened his tone.  “And you’re right, I don’t know.  The same way you don’t know what it means for me to have demon blood in me and not be able to change that, but you for damn sure try to tell me how to deal with it.”

“But did anyone stop by and give you advice on how you should handle me when I came back?  Because I got a message point-blank--stop you, or the angels will.”

“Threats, yeah--and you still want one of them so bad that you’re willing to take advantage of some random guy who you think might have been his vessel!” Sam didn't say it in so many words, but the underlying message was clear: _you want to fuck the guy who threatened to kill me. You don't even care._ Dean knew that Sam was saying it, but the idea  that he'd choose anything over his brother was too absurd to even argue it. So Dean went with his go-to response lately--a snipe about Sam's relationship with Ruby.

“Sorry I’m not quite around to banging monsters yet.” Dean mumbled his response so automatically that he didn't think anything of it, but his words made Sam break his remaining efforts to stay calm.

“This!  This is what I’m talking about." Sam banged his hand on the steering wheel and swerved onto the shoulder of the road, stopping the car underneath a tree. "I’ve tried, Dean.  I’ve had faith-- since before I ever had a reason to believe in anything other than the things that we hunt.”

"Yeah, I remember your faith." Dean closed his eyes and rubbed them, exhausted. He'd had enough memories of Sam's faith, Sam's belief in angels, to haunt him since he'd met his first and second angels.

“I’ve tried to live a normal life, I’ve tried hunting, I’m trying to help stop the apocalypse and yet I’ve still got angels telling me I’m dirt.  We spend day after day in this car only to end up here with you looking at me exactly the way they do.  And I get it, okay, someone pulls you out of hell, you’re gonna put some stock in what they say.  But now you’re like obsessed with this guy, giving him nicknames, fooling around with what you thought was his vessel—" Sam raised his voice over Dean's growled attempt to interrupt, "You tell me you slept with Anna and I can’t help but wonder if that was just you trying to take a step to what you really wanted. I don’t know who you are anymore, I don’t know what you want.”

Dean let Sam’s words sink in for a moment until it clicked for him that he actually knew what he wanted.  “Maybe I just want to enjoy what’s left of my life before I get killed trying to stop the inevitable.  You still think we’re going to make it to 60?  I guess technically I’ve made it to 70, right?  But as far as time here on earth—if God exists and if he ordered Cas to pull me up out of hell to stop this thing, or for whatever, then I figure any hope we have is on its last legs.  Who are we, Sam?  A couple of hunters—we’re supposed to help stop an  _apocalypse_ .  You think those powers that old yellow eyes gave you are gonna save the world?  I don’t.  Cas told me a story once about his brothers dying.   _Angels_  dying in this war, Sam.  We’re not winning this.  And when hell makes its way on up here, there’s not gonna be any happy moments, any joy.  So, what I want is to have that.  I want to just want to say ‘fuck it’ and have that before the world is just a giant rack with all of us taking turns being off and on.”

Sam shook his head and stared at the roof of the car for a moment before returning his sights to Dean. "You think sleeping with angels is going to help anything? You think it makes you better than me because you're committing some kind of blasphemy and I'm running around with the damned. We're both screwed up."

“That much is obvious," Dean sighed and waited a beat before continuing, " I wanted Misha.  He made me think of Cas.  Past that,” Dean shook his head and hunched in on himself defensively, bouncing his right leg hard enough that Sam felt it in the driver’s seat, “I’m not thinking past that."

“But it was about Castiel. You think Castiel’s going to make you happy...” Sam's words were halfway between a statement and a question. “And you’re not worried about what those thoughts are going to mean when your angel shows up?”

“That’s the funny thing about Cas—he’s a little more focused on Lilith running around popping seals like bubble wrap.  And funny enough, he actually has faith that we can win this war.  He’s like you that way; hoping right down to the last minute.”

“So, if you’re into Castiel and he’s into the war, what are you going to do about that happiness you’re trying for?”

“Huh.” Dean grunted.  “We’ll see how things go in Vancouver.”

**Bonus Epilogue Dialogue a/k/a If Had Written the Dean/Cas follow-up:**

“This vessel’s name was Daniel and…his soul has already passed on.” Castiel straightened the cuff of his trench coat, watching Dean relax his grip on the gun as the hunter awoke more fully and registered the angel’s presence “Your…new friend does bear an uncanny physical resemblance to him though.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is AU in the sense that Jensen, Misha, Jared etc. do not work on “Supernatural”, but rather as voiceover artists on a popular cartoon so they’re not as recognizable to the general public; I didn’t want to address Misha playing Castiel and Jensen playing Dean in this fic so Misha has never heard of the Winchesters, but Dean definitely recognizes Misha’s face as Castiel.  Also, Misha’s single and has a home near Boston, while Jen and Jared are friends who live together in Vancouver.


End file.
